Express & Echo - news coverage
Transcript of an Express & Echo article by Anne Byrne, Sept 4th 2008.
Pam Rice, from Turntable, with Kris Sum, from Switch Systems, which is donating computers to the charity. MATT AUSTIN EE020908_MA1_03
Net gain for charity after city IT firm's offer of computers
IT was not just offers of furniture that poured into an Exeter charity after an appeal in Action Echo.
Two weeks ago, we asked readers to consider donating good quality items which they no longer wanted to Turntable, which provides furniture and domestic appliances to people living on benefits.
Now, it looks like the charity will be able to offer its customers computers as well.
Pam Rice, Turntable's organiser; said: "The amount of phone calls we have had has gone up by 50 per cent. It is really great as we had hit a bit of a slow patch.
"What's really pleasing is that people are contacting us having already checked that their upholstered items have the correct fire label."
One of those phone calls was from Kris Sum, who set up IT company Switch Systems Ltd in Heavitree 18 months ago.
Now, thanks to that call, Turntable will be able to offer previously owned computers, which have been specially cleaned.
Pam said: "We thought that we would take one or two computers at a time as a pilot to start with, purely because of the support that people tend to need with them.
"It is always good when we get backing like this from local businesses.
"We will probably make a small charge for the computers, perhaps £15 to cover costs"
Switch Systems provides IT solutions for small to medium sized businesses in the region.
Owner Kris told the Echo: "I saw the artcile about Turntable in the paper. We have some clients who have computers that they don't use any more and once they are refurbished they just sit in our back office.
"We have offered them to other charities before but generally they don't want them as they don't take electrical goods.
"Apart from the computers we get, we will offer it as a service to Turntable that if they are offered computers we will clean them, making sure that data has been completely wiped so that anything on there will not get into the wrong hands. Cleaning the computers is not a huge tax on our time"
Apart from futnirue, Turntable also accepts TVs, curtains and rugs, table lamps, coffee tables and bedside tables. Anyone who wants to donate furniture can contact the charity on 01392 202032.
Time to Switch!
A lot of our clients have old unused computers (either from computer upgrades or from consolidation of their systems), and these are often left around so they can be used for spare parts. Our store room was being increasingly filled with these machines, so we thought it would be a good idea to refurbish them and provide them to charities and people in need.
After securely wiping the disc drives, RAM testing and a bit of cleaning, the systems are fully operational and ready for an operating system. If the computer came in with a windows license and suitable restoration media, we are able to re-use the license via the Microsoft Authorised Refurbisher agreement. If there is no license, then we install open source operating systems and software onto the machines.
Technologies Used
- Secure Data Destruction
We have an automated data destruction process which securely deletes all information from the hard disk drives of all computers we refurbish. We don't want those old files being un-deleted with the possibility of them falling into the wrong hands! - Open Source Software
Many donated systems do not come supplied with an Operating System, or in some cases they have a older operating system that is no longer supported. In these circumstances, we install a free operating system called Ubuntu Linux - which provides a web browser, office suite, free support via the internet and security updates indefinately!